Join AccuWeather Founder & Executive Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers and AccuWeather Network Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno to discover how a blizzard built the NYC subway system.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Invisible Iceberg.
00:07On today's show, we explore how a blizzard built the New York City subway system.
00:13Plus, we rank the biggest snowstorms to ever hit the U.S. and we take an interesting look
00:19back at the history of the subway.
00:23It all starts now on Invisible Iceberg.
00:33It was one of the most devastating winter storms ever recorded.
00:37The blizzard of March of 1888 buried the northeast cities from Maryland to Maine, creating massive
00:44snow drifts, paralyzing transportation and cutting off communication.
00:50With 50 plus inches of snow and hurricane force winds, this deadly storm left a lasting
00:56mark on New York City and history.
01:00How it happened is just one of the true and fascinating stories in the book Invisible
01:04Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History.
01:07Joining us right now is AccuWeather founder and executive chairman and author of the book
01:11Invisible Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr. Joel Myers.
01:16We have a heck of a snowstorm to talk about here.
01:20Two of them, actually.
01:21Two of them.
01:22But the one we're going to start with is the Great White Hurricane of 1888.
01:28Let's talk about what was a full-fledged blizzard of 1888.
01:34When I grew up in the 40s and 50s, you know, I always been interested in meteorology.
01:39Everybody knew of the Great Blizzard of 88.
01:42Even though Philadelphia only had about 10 inches of snow, it still was, but we all knew
01:47in the Northeast, it was really something people talked about.
01:51And this blizzard, of course, hit New York City the hardest, 26 inches of snow, but that's
01:56not the biggest thing.
01:57There were drifts to 52 feet in the city.
02:01Six stories high out of one storm, and it hit with shocking suddenness and a surprise.
02:09There were not accurate weather forecasts in those days, of course, and also communications
02:15were nothing like they are today to let people know.
02:20So there were some rumors that a storm might be coming on March 9th, but nobody was prepared
02:27what was going to happen the next day.
02:30And as typically the case in March, it wasn't very cold prior to the storm, was it?
02:35No.
02:36In fact, it was mild.
02:37It was in the 50s, at least in New York, might have gotten close to 60.
02:42So people thought spring was right around the corner, as it was, with the exception
02:48of what was going to happen over the next couple of days.
02:51And as usual, it's warm.
02:54The storm started as rain.
02:56Yeah, it did.
02:57It started as rain.
02:58It was a northerly flow.
02:59So it was rain and temperatures fell through the 40s.
03:03People went to bed.
03:04It was still in the 40s.
03:06About 1 o'clock in the morning, temperature at 32, rain changed to snow.
03:11Temperature continued to plummet, got down to 10 degrees or less.
03:16The snow became very heavy.
03:18Some people had set out to work and school at 6, 7 in the morning.
03:22It was snowing, but quickly, in the next hour or two, it turned into a blizzard.
03:28Very heavy snow, strong, amazing winds, temperatures falling to, as they say, 10 degrees, which
03:35is very unusual in March.
03:37So a very dry, powdery snow, but extremely heavy, gusting, drifting.
03:43It was a disaster very quickly.
03:45You looked at the surface map and...
03:48Surface weather map.
03:49As meteorologist, yes.
03:50As opposed to the upper air.
03:51The surface, the meteorological map for that time frame.
03:57What did you estimate the sustained winds and the gusts with this storm?
04:03Well, we had an official report at 6-hour intervals, they didn't report, of 50 miles
04:09an hour.
04:10But I suspect there were sustained winds during that storm as high as 65 miles an hour.
04:15So approaching Hurricane Forest, certainly a whole gale at least.
04:18It may have even touched Hurricane Forest.
04:20I'm sure there were gusts over 75 miles an hour, maybe even to 80.
04:24So imagine basically a hurricane in New York City with heavy snow, temperatures only 10
04:31degrees, tremendous drifting and all, and people getting lost in the snow, just walking
04:37a block or two, and perished.
04:40Accurate with the real field temperatures, which we did not have at that time, 10 degrees
04:44with that...
04:45We hadn't invented them yet.
04:46Probably was 25 below zero.
04:47I was going to say 25 to 30 degrees below zero.
04:48Good point, yeah.
04:49So you're out there 25, 30 below zero, snow hitting in the face all around you, you can't
04:54see anything.
04:56So people literally died walking a block.
05:00They were overwhelmed with the snow.
05:03The senator from New York tried to walk three blocks from his office to his home and was
05:09out there.
05:10He was rescued after two hours.
05:12He survived, but he died a month later.
05:15So that gives you an idea.
05:18I mean, it was incredible.
05:20He said walking, he touched the signposts.
05:24That's how deep the drifts were.
05:26But some of them, of course, you sunk down in and like you were under water.
05:30I mean, it was a crazy situation.
05:33This had huge impacts on the utilities and all above ground functions, which everything
05:38was, right?
05:39Yeah, everything was.
05:40There was no subway system, and you had all the gas lines, the electric lines, the telegraph.
05:47Everything was above ground.
05:48It was sort of a mess.
05:50And this really forced, it caused us to say, hey, this is not going to work because a lot
05:57of these walls, the poles came down.
06:00It was very disruptive.
06:01It took really years to get back to where it was.
06:04So this was the impetus to build a subway system in New York and Boston.
06:09Of course, it shut Wall Street down for a period of time.
06:12Three days, Wall Street was shut.
06:14And they hate to close for any reason because it's a national global center.
06:17Thanks, Dr. Joel, for giving us a fascinating story about the Great White Hurricane.
06:24It is a fascinating story.
06:25It really is.
06:26And you'll be joining us here to talk more about this in just a few moments.
06:29Yes.
06:30Here with more perspective on the blizzard of 1888 and its impact on the New York subway
06:35system is Conchetta Ben-Savenga.
06:38She is the director of the New York Transit Museum.
06:41Conchetta, thank you for joining us today.
06:45Thank you for having me.
06:47How did this affect New York City's elevated train and the people who rode them that day?
06:52Interestingly, New York City had a pretty extensive series of elevated subway trains.
06:56So imagine trains a couple of stories above ground.
07:01And also at this time, there were newfangled things like electricity, telegraphs.
07:06And so there was lots of wires in the street.
07:09So very kind of congested streets.
07:10And then two stories over your head is a series of train tracks.
07:15And so this blizzard came in out of nowhere with very little warning because we didn't
07:19have things like your service.
07:23And it completely crippled New York City.
07:25Of the 400 casualties of this storm, 200 of them were in New York City.
07:29And more than one was found frozen in a snowdrift that had just gotten blown into the snow.
07:35As it relates to the elevated trains specifically, 15,000 people were stranded over the course
07:40of this storm, two stories above the street level on elevated trains.
07:46Also, the cleanup was brutal as well.
07:49There were 25 million cubic feet of snow that were removed from the streets of New York
07:55as a result of this storm, which also had a lot of other debris and manure and things
08:01kind of mixed in there.
08:03And so it led to a lot of transformation in New York City, some of which was about differentiating
08:09waste, garbage and snow removal, which we still do to this day.
08:13And then majoritatively for our purposes, the biggest catalyst was to really take seriously
08:18the idea of putting mass transit underground in the city of New York.
08:23How was the New York City subway created and funded in the early 1900s?
08:27Yep.
08:28So the first subway anywhere in the world is actually in London in 1865 is the first
08:34time that they actually went below ground.
08:37And London did it for the exact same reason that New York did it, which is just really
08:42weather events and congestion.
08:44And then the first subway in the United States is actually not New York, it's Boston, much
08:49to our dismay, but we think we're better.
08:53And so there were conversations that were happening about the notion of a subway.
08:58But up until that point, the powers that be were kind of contented with the elevated train
09:04system and network that we had until they weren't as a direct result of this hurricane.
09:09So almost immediately after the Great White Hurricane and the blizzard of 1888, talks
09:14really accelerated.
09:15A Rapid Transit Commission was formed and founded in 1890.
09:19And then in 1900, ground was broken for the very first subway system in New York City,
09:25which took four years to build, opened on October 27th, 1904, and was nine miles of
09:31tracks and 28 stations on the island of Manhattan.
09:34How prepared are we today to handle a similar event and other extreme weather events?
09:40The biggest challenges for New York City is, most folks don't actually think about this
09:43quite often, but there's only one borough of New York that's on the North American continent.
09:48Only the Bronx is on the contiguous lower 48.
09:51The rest of New York City is comprised of boroughs that are on islands, Staten Island,
09:56Manhattan Island, and geographic Long Island, which is where Brooklyn and Queens are.
10:00And so we've got a lot of water, and then you have that juxtaposed against extreme climate
10:04issues that we're all confronting, rising sea levels.
10:07And so something like Superstorm Sandy that happened in New York 12 years ago was a defining
10:13moment for us, where we had to say, these once-in-a-century storms are not, in fact,
10:18once-in-a-century.
10:19They're happening with greater frequency, with greater velocity.
10:23And so there's a greater sense of urgency about how the city responds to that.
10:27Manchetta Bensavinga, director of the New York Transit Museum, thanks again for joining
10:32us today.
10:33Thank you for having me.
10:35Still to come, we travel back in time for an interesting look at the history of the
10:40subway.
10:41But next, what are the most powerful snowstorms to ever hit the U.S.?
10:46We reveal the top five after the break.
10:57Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg, I'm Bernie Rano.
11:07Back with us to talk more about historic winter weather of the past is Akiwa, the founder
11:12and executive chairman and author of the book Invisible Iceberg, When Climate and Weather
11:17Shaped History.
11:18Dr. Joel Myers, all right, the Great White Hurricane of 1888, was it the biggest storm
11:25that year?
11:26It was one of two great storms.
11:28There was another one.
11:29There was.
11:30Two months earlier, on January 12th, I think it was, 1888, it started out as a relatively
11:36mild day across the upper Midwest, the Dakotas, Nebraska, down into Kansas, across Missouri,
11:45Iowa, Minnesota, and so about area.
11:47And in fact, schoolchildren foolishly went to school without heavy clothing.
11:53There were no good weather forecasts in 1888.
11:56I guess some of the Army Signal Corps, which really ran the weather forecasting service,
12:03knew cold was coming from Canada, but didn't issue any kind of warning or alert at all.
12:08Of course, the communications were nothing like they are today.
12:11But in any case, this huge and extreme cold wave swept southward across the plains, accompanied
12:18by rapidly dropping temperatures, falling to minus 40, accompanied by heavy snow, blowing
12:24snow, blizzard conditions.
12:27It was called the schoolchildren's blizzard.
12:29Four hundred people known died, probably since we didn't have good numbers.
12:34It was in the thousands.
12:35It was a disaster.
12:36In fact, for decades afterward, people thought of this day like we think of 9-11 and the
12:45day Pearl Harbor was bombed, December 7, 1941.
12:50This was a day that literally lived in infamy across the Midwest.
12:54It was a disaster.
12:55People lost family members.
12:57So many schoolchildren died at the schools or trying to get home.
13:01And how did that change weather forecasting in the United States?
13:06Well, forecasting, it was called indications.
13:09It wasn't even called forecasting by the Army Signal Corps, was moved then and a few
13:16years later, two years later, to what was established as the U.S. Weather Bureau.
13:22And it was put under the Department of Agriculture and then 50 years later was moved to under
13:27the Department of Commerce, where it is today.
13:29After that storm, that fundamentally changed the infrastructure in New York City.
13:37It did, yeah, because all transportation was above ground, the elevated, the gas lines,
13:44the water lines, the electric lines were all above ground.
13:49A lot of that was put underground.
13:50Of course, the subway was built and about 15 years later, it opened.
13:54Actually, the Boston subway was developed, too, and opened a year or two before the New
13:59York subway, Philadelphia subway system, Chicago, San Francisco.
14:05So all these subways, but it started in the impetus for subways was the Great White Hurricane,
14:12the blizzard of 88 in New York City.
14:14And how prepared are we today to handle a similar event and other extreme events?
14:19I mean, those are two extreme snowstorms that hit.
14:24How do you think we'd handle it today?
14:25Two blizzards, thousands of people died.
14:27We don't know the number, probably tens of thousands ultimately because of sickness and
14:32disease that followed and people lost their lives.
14:35They were two major events in one year, one in the Midwest and, of course, the Great White
14:39Hurricane, not only in New York, but the Northeast.
14:41Today, things are totally different.
14:44First of all, we have forecasts and warnings.
14:48I'm sure in both those cases, AccuAid would have given several days advance notice, at
14:53least, that such major storms were coming.
14:56A technology of forecasting is so much better.
14:58So people would have been able to take preparations.
15:00It wouldn't have been a surprise.
15:02They would have gone to the supermarket and stocked up on food.
15:05They wouldn't have put themselves, for the most part, in vulnerable positions.
15:08Now, of course, as we saw in the recent hurricane, people, even when they hear things, don't
15:14do what they should be doing to protect themselves and their family.
15:17But most people would.
15:19And so we also have mechanization to clear the roads and to rescue people and to deal
15:26with things. We're much better prepared today.
15:29And, of course, the recovery.
15:31That's what the other thing, not only would they get the advance notice, but we could
15:35recover from especially snowstorms pretty quickly.
15:40You know, instead of like New York City, you said from the Great White Hurricane, it took
15:44years. Some things, but even even routine, it was weeks or months till after the Great
15:51White Hurricane, everything resumed routinely because of all the damage to the utilities
15:56and such. Yes.
15:57What are New York City's biggest snowstorms and how does the 1888 snowstorm rank?
16:05If you just look at the snow amounts, about 26 inches in 1888, which was officially
16:10measured, there have been six storms, snowstorms in that magnitude within about an inch
16:16of that. Three of them have occurred in the last 20 years.
16:21Four of them have occurred within the last 30 years.
16:24The biggest storm after that was in 1947.
16:27I remember that growing up in Philadelphia because I like snow and we only got about 10
16:31inches. New York City got 26.
16:33Most of the snow was north of the city.
16:35I wasn't experiencing it as a seven year old, so I was disappointed.
16:39But the fact is that it's interesting that four of the great snowstorms in New York City
16:44have occurred in the last 30 years.
16:46But the difference between the blizzard of 88 was the wind and extreme cold that
16:52accompanied it. It was truly a blizzard.
16:55Like you see in the plains, sometimes never, rarely experienced along the East Coast.
17:01Certainly one storm that comes to my mind, the blizzard of 93, the 88 storm, not as
17:09impactful over such a large area, but the combination of the cold and the wind.
17:15That's certainly one storm that comes to my mind.
17:18Yeah, it's comparable.
17:19The difference is we have the infrastructure today to fight it and the warnings and all
17:24that. But you're right. I mean, we've had storms that approached the severity, but not
17:2952 foot drifts in 93 like there was in 1888.
17:33I want to thank you, the founder and executive chairman and author of the book Invisible
17:37Iceberg, When Climate and Weather Shaped History.
17:39Dr. Joe Myers, for joining us today.
17:42Bernie, my pleasure as always.
17:43Next, we take an interesting look back at the history of the subway.
17:54Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg.
18:05I'm Bernie Rayner. We now know how deadly severe weather in 1888 helped define the need
18:11and accelerate the construction of the New York subway system.
18:16But here's some other facts about underground public transportation you may not know.
18:21The world's oldest subway is in London.
18:24It opened in 1863 with steam trains running on the below ground railway.
18:29Electric power was possible about 20 years later as private companies invested in this
18:35new form of transportation.
18:37Today, the London Underground or Tube is publicly owned as 272 stations and serves five
18:44million riders every day.
18:47Here in the U.S., the oldest subway system is the T in Boston.
18:51In 1897, the first section of what became the MBTA, or Massachusetts Bay Transport
18:57Authority, opened below Boston's Tremont Street, moving streetcars underground to reduce
19:03street congestion.
19:04The T expanded to four lines, red, orange, blue and green.
19:08And today, the MBTA moves about half a million Bostonians daily.
19:14The most recent U.S.
19:15subway expansion is Washington, D.C.'s Metro system.
19:19In 2022, the Metro added several new stations to Dulles Airport and other parts of
19:24Virginia. D.C.'s Metro is the second busiest rapid transit system in the U.S.
19:29behind only the New York subway.
19:33That's our show for today.
19:34For more information and get your copy of the book Invisible Iceberg, When Climate and
19:40Weather Shaped History by Dr.
19:41Joel Myers, go to InvisibleIceberg.com.
19:45If you have a question or comment, send us an email at questions at AccuWeather.com.
19:50We look forward to seeing you next time.